'S no good thing

It snowed again today. Well, it hailed and that’s just as bad. It snowed last week for real, the heaviest falling in Wales. Lucky me, I was going to Wales for a university open day.

I can honestly say I have never seen the attraction of snow. It’s cold, wet and very annoying. It is like rain, only rain can sometimes be reasonably warm. In fact if you are really hot or it is really sunny out, rain can be a welcome, refreshing choice of weather. Snow is always cold. And more often than not, accompanied by a chill wind. Snow also means that there is a good chance of ice on the roads. When you are making the four-hour drive to Lampeter, Wales, the last thing you need is icy roads. No. I think snow is the worst kind of weather possible.

When it started snowing and I pointed out that it has absolutely no benefit to us (even rain waters plants) and that there is no reason we should welcome it, people pointed out that it rarely snows and it is a nice change.

No. No it’s not. Just because it snows once a year or so down here in the south, that’s not a reason to celebrate it. That place that had a huge mudslide that killed thousands of people the other week doesn’t often have huge mudslides. I can guarantee you that the survivors were not thinking, “Wow that hasn’t happened in decades. I’m glad I saw it in my lifetime”. No. They were thinking, “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! My fucking house has been swallowed by a billion tonnes of mud and my family is dead.”

Just because something doesn’t happen all that often does not make it a good thing. The holocaust only happened once (unless your David Irving), but if it happened again people would not be saying “Amazing, two in the space of a century, who would have expected it.”

No. Snow is not good. It’s cold, wet and dangerous. It’s not even that much fun to play in because you get wet and cold. In fact playing in the snow is even worse than playing in the sand at the beach. And that’s saying a lot.

Writer's Block

I’m in a foul mood because I want a to have a bath and go to bed because I’m tired. I can’t, however, because there is no hot water and now I have to wait an hour for the emersion to heat the water up. To top off my frustration, my Dad has just finished teaching me one of those life lessons I hear so much about. This particular one was about being nice to people. Boring! My elbow hurts, my finger hurts and my legs ache. I got two hours sleep last night before I had to get up to go to work. To top it all off, I came to write a blog and discovered I have actual writers block for possibly the first time in my life. My atrocious lack of energy is affecting my concentration so badly; I have to type each word at least twice in order to get the right spelling.

I was looking over my previous blogs on both blogger and myspace to see if they gave me inspiration however I had no luck where that was concerned. Writer’s block is a deadly thing. I remember thumbing through the most recent issue of “Muse Magazine” and seeing a help line number for writers who get writer’s block. Working for this help line must be a really boring job. I wonder what would happen if the person answering the phones got writer’s block as it must happen occasionally; some stories are destined to go nowhere other than an early grave.

To be honest, while I enjoy my life immensely, it does not have much variation. College. Work. MSN. The occasional gig or party. I think it is acceptable to say that term time is monotonous as reasonably uninteresting. This weekly routine can be helpful in some ways; the security can be comforting, as people generally dislike change of any kind. Unfortunately this repetitive lifestyle does not lend itself all too favourably to blogging. I need something interesting to happen so I can write about it. I think I need to become more spontaneous – do something crazy and exciting once in a while. I’m sure that would be able to cure my writer’s block and help me type something. Having said that: I think I just typed a blog without really noticing. At least my writer’s block is alleviated – for now.

Last Tuesday

Last Tuesday saw the last day of Winter-een-mas ’06. That’s it for another year. I felt a bit bad that, because of major deadlines, I had neglected gaming over the holiday season. In fact I have neglected my gaming needs since I began college last year. After my final GCSE exam (physics I think) I ran home and flicked on the Windwaker. I then did not budge until I had completed it. Over the summer holidays I played games non-stop, the free MMORPG ‘Runescape’ becoming a particular favourite. For the last few weeks of the holidays I borrowed a DVD from my aunt called ‘Animals’, a stand-up show by one of the guys that wrote ‘The Office’. I would constantly listen to the DVD in the background while I played Runescape, alternating between the normal and commentary versions of the stand-up. After the holidays ended and I began college, I stopped playing Runescape to devote more time to my work. The DVD was returned to my aunt but not before I recorded the audio onto CD so I could listen to it on the bus.

Last Tuesday I joined a new gaming forum to talk to people about a TV show I wanted to make for a college project about gaming. While browsing the forum I found a thread about underrated games. I decided to add a comment about an old favourite of mine called Tombi, a 2.5D platformer on the Playstation. Released in 1998, I played a demo and fell in love. I bought the game and played it constantly although it was so big that I never completed it. Tombi was my life and people who knew me then (especially those in my maths class) could tell I liked it. However time passed and soon Pokémon was released. I bought that and soon forgot about Tombi.

It is amazing, and quite worrying, how your life can change. Things that used to play a major part in your life can fade away without you noticing and quickly get replaced by new things. 1998 was eight years ago and I find myself wondering what my life will be like in another eight years. I would have finished university and be an adult, twenty-five years of age. A quarter of a decade old. I contemplate what I have in my life now that will be the same then, if anything. Where will I be living? What will I be doing? The realisation that I am, that we are all, at a crucial point in life.

Last Tuesday I got a reply for another user of that gaming forum informing me that there was a sequel called Tombi 2. My first Ebay purchase and two days later I had a mint condition copy of Tombi 2, a brand new one retails at £85 online. Released in 2000, I had gone six years without knowing that there was a sequel. Now the PS2 has moved into my bedroom and lives alongside my Gamecube. Tombi 2 has taken psudo-permanent residency in the ‘limited edition’ silver console and there it will stay until I have completed it.

I am hoping it wont take me eight years to complete however it is larger than the original game and I still have yet to complete that fully. I am going to try and play games more often, especially now that the deadlines I was worried about have been met. Gaming was my life and I am beginning to feel alive again. I guess I’ll have to see where I end up in eight years, there is no point in worrying about it now. In the meanwhile I think I’m going to go play